Civ5 vs Civ6 - what each of those games did better?

[Kmart_Elvis]

I find the civs in 6 to be more varied, unique, and can support different strategies better than 5. The problem with 5 is that it heavily relied on more a single meta strategy. It also helps that 6 has leader abilities on top of the civ abilities, making them even more differentiated from each other. Even if wide < tall in 6 still, it's not as one sided as the tall < wide in 5. The result is that I find the replayability so much better in 6 (and I've far eclipsed my 6 playtime past 5).

 

[Kwami]

I LOVED the heavy pen writing sound that played whenever it was time to pick a new social policy.

This is the one thing that I really miss from V. Bring back the pen sound!

Otherwise, I prefer VI for everything else.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Civ 5's endgame is incredible. It's probably the only Civ installment where I sort of dislike the early game with its incessant bottlenecks, its incredibly heavy reliance on religion to get past said bottlenecks, and wonder hogging AI. Once you stabilize however, usually by the turn Lily_Lancer wins a deity Civ 6 game, you enter the endgame and SUDDENLY you have ideologies! and meaningful diplomacy! World Congress votes! Projects! Social Policy Trees are suddenly turned on their head in terms of usefulness. Air combat, Indirect Fire and a surprisingly deep pool of units and promotion combo's make endgame wars rewarding and fun.

Civ 6 is the opposite. Plenty of yields early means you, as a player, have more freedom to play the strategy you want and roleplay - you can still do this in Civ 5 but forcing a certain playstyle can result in a loss. In Civ 6, there's always time to bounce back from a rough start and I really like that. The downside to getting so many freebie yields however, is that the endgame gets somewhat boring.

Other stuff seems pretty obvious or comes down to taste. I will say though that I really hate at least half Civ 5's Civ abilities. France is sad joke, Denmark a pathetic excuse for Vikings, India is outright racist (omfg STOP bullying Gandhi *and* India Firaxis STAWP), Portugal is the dullest Civ ever made, etc etc. Thank god/jah/the whole kama sutra they fixed this in Civ 6 with meaningful bonuses.

In general

Civ 5: Endgame, Civ music themes, Religion, Diplomacy, World Congress, Specialties, balance between the gameplay mechanics, overall clarity of game concepts.
Civ 6: Early game, Civ abilitiesWonder tile restrictions, Split Tech Tree, Leader models, Graphics (sans the Hills), Depth of gameplay mechanics, Espionage

 

[untitledjuan]

In general, I prefer the way religion is handled in Civ5, however I do think that religions was better in Civ4 and that it makes no sense to have a religious victory. Religion is clearly one of the most important factors in human history and civilisation, but it makes no sense to make a game where each particular "civ" must have its own separate religion instead of a single religion being common to various "civs" and shaping their actions and opinions towards other "civs".

 

[trev1972]

Overall i prefer 6, but i truly hate religion in civ 6... and find world congress vote topics to be daft.

 

[Krajzen]

Civ 5's endgame is incredible. It's probably the only Civ installment where I sort of dislike the early game with its incessant bottlenecks, its incredibly heavy reliance on religion to get past said bottlenecks, and wonder hogging AI. Once you stabilize however, usually by the turn Lily_Lancer wins a deity Civ 6 game, you enter the endgame and SUDDENLY you have ideologies! and meaningful diplomacy! World Congress votes! Projects! Social Policy Trees are suddenly turned on their head in terms of usefulness. Air combat, Indirect Fire and a surprisingly deep pool of units and promotion combo's make endgame wars rewarding and fun.

Civ 6 is the opposite. Plenty of yields early means you, as a player, have more freedom to play the strategy you want and roleplay - you can still do this in Civ 5 but forcing a certain playstyle can result in a loss. In Civ 6, there's always time to bounce back from a rough start and I really like that. The downside to getting so many freebie yields however, is that the endgame gets somewhat boring.

I have somehow missed that interesting fact about how civ5 and civ6 are opposite in terms of earlygame/endgame balance. Yeah, early game in civ5 is so stressful to me, a ton of problems everywhere, workers are such horribly slow with improving terrain (especially jungle, oh God jungle heavy lands in civ5 on epic speed is a torture), global happiness is a constant headache, getting CS requires either luck or hemorrhaging money... But civ5 BNW had very good endgame for me.

Other stuff seems pretty obvious or comes down to taste. I will say though that I really hate at least half Civ 5's Civ abilities. France is sad joke, Denmark a pathetic excuse for Vikings, India is outright racist (omfg STOP bullying Gandhi *and* India Firaxis STAWP), Portugal is the dullest Civ ever made, etc etc. Thank god/jah/the whole kama sutra they fixed this in Civ 6 with meaningful bonuses.

Yeah, the philosophy of design of civ5 factions is worse than civ6 and even civ4. It is too reliant on VERY specific, niche abilities, which often either aren't used often or aren't that good at all. And many civs in AI hands just have no bonuses at all. On the other hand we have civs with strong uniques, but very unsatisfying regarding "coverage of lore". In civ5 America, England, Denmark, Ottomans, Mongolia and Japan don't have any non military trait. Even strong civs just had boring design - Ethiopia basically had only monuments with faith, Babylon was entirely based on very early academy, Chinese civilization was reduced to military and money giving libraries, Carthage was basically "free harbor: the civ", Spain was pure luck... Only by G&K civ5 was actually trying to properly design its factions.
Maya, Brazil, Inca, Shoshone, Venice, Poland, Assyria, Huns, Sweden, Portugal, Indonesia, Korea were IMO by far the best designed ones. And almost all are from expansions.

 

[Josephias]

Many would be repeated, but let's list:


Civ6 > Civ5
City Management. Districts are a welcome feature and force city specialization and influence territory choice. In Civ5 you ended building everything regardless of the city. It might have a certain queue strategy in your first moves and for national wonders, but then was just adding buildings to the list.
Wonder Management: As some others pointed out, It was just nonsensical to have some las-vegas style AI capitols with countless wonders. In Civ IV, I modded it to allow only three wonders per city (never did that on Civ5 fearing the rule change will block achievements, and just hated when it happened). Need for tiles, placement restrictions and other conditions in Civ6 wonders make planing and spreading your wonders much more interesting in Civ6 (and wonders have been always the cherry on top for builder-style players). Yes, you still have the one-tile lake Huey Teocally or similars, but at least it is not just a mega-city building all.
City Defenses: Standard city defense on Civ5 was just ridiculously high, making conquest painful until you reached artillery. I feel civ6 provides much more interesting mechanics (siege, wall strenght vs city stregth, encampments), altough this is penalized due to the fact war is in general much less interesting due to AI incompetence (see Civ5>Civ6)


Civ5 > Civ6
Combat AI challenge / consistency. I can't tell for sure if AI was better in Civ5, but it felt for sure more challenging. Wars were indeed treatening (in Civ6, except for very specific cases, you may feel AI is just moving around units without creating a real threat).
Game Pace: Civ5 was maybe a tad too slow, but it achieved to fit well all the game features in the 500-turn standard. In Civ6, you feel everithing goes too fast. If you were ahead in Civ5, you still might find the challenge a "racing against the clock" to achieve a specific victory type instead of a time victory. In Civ6 the actual challenge is getting this time victory preventing the AI and yourself of getting a different victory first (a quite boring challenge, all needs to be said)
Trade: Commercial routes (both the ones you sent and the ones you received) were critical in Civ5 economy, and you actually felt the impact of wars in your economy. In Civ6, it is either there is too much gold, or trade routes are too much spread in small bonuses, you don't feel much how impactful they are.


I'll probably add more in the future, and maybe two more categories (Undecided and Civ 4 >> Civ5&6), but it is getting late here, so I will close for now.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I have somehow missed that interesting fact about how civ5 and civ6 are opposite in terms of earlygame/endgame balance. Yeah, early game in civ5 is so stressful to me, a ton of problems everywhere, workers are such horribly slow with improving terrain (especially jungle, oh God jungle heavy lands in civ5 on epic speed is a torture), global happiness is a constant headache, getting CS requires either luck or hemorrhaging money... But civ5 BNW had very good endgame for me.

Jungle starts are the worst, but are surprisingly tolerable if you went Liberty. Then again, nobody goes Liberty (and they're wrong), so... but yes, compared to Civ 6, Civ 5's pace is excruciating and the early game is disturbingly samey for ever civ. Scout => Monument => Shrine => then a worker / granary / settler in some order, and then a wonder. If you have a poor production start, you skip the granary and/or steal a worker from a CS to save time. Rinse and repeat for every game. FUN!

Yeah, the philosophy of design of civ5 factions is worse than civ6 and even civ4. It is too reliant on VERY specific, niche abilities, which often either aren't used often or aren't that good at all. And many civs in AI hands just have no bonuses at all. On the other hand we have civs with strong uniques, but very unsatisfying regarding "coverage of lore". In civ5 America, England, Denmark, Ottomans, Mongolia and Japan don't have any non military trait. Even strong civs just had boring design - Ethiopia basically had only monuments with faith, Babylon was entirely based on very early academy, Chinese civilization was reduced to military and money giving libraries, Carthage was basically "free harbor: the civ", Spain was pure luck... Only by G&K civ5 was actually trying to properly design its factions.

Carthage's free harbour made them a lot of fun to play in a game with full Liberty and a happiness based religion (They are one of the few civs that can afford skipping Tithe, due to their coastal start and instant City Connections upon researching The Wheel). I definitely feel like they're massively underrated and mistakenly labelled as a militaristic civ - they are a colonization civ, and that's a huge rarity in Civ 5. There's a reason why they're my avatar.

Spain is loads of fun, but sadly they, like Carthage are map dependant. Unlike Carthage, they are also rival-dependent. The bonus is useless if Polynesia are rolled into your game. It is semi useless if you play on Continents (it is, shockingly, VERY good if you play Pangaea) I still love playing Spain however. Their bonus has to be made meaningful and getting there gives me something to be excited for in that boring earlygame.

btw Japan has a non-militaristic trait. They gain +1 culture from fishing boats and atolls. god these EdAnton bonuses. I do not miss that era of Civ.

Maya, Brazil, Inca, Shoshone, Venice, Poland, Assyria, Huns, Sweden, Portugal, Indonesia, Korea were IMO by far the best designed ones. And almost all are from expansions.

I'd agree, but that list misses the Songhai, who are perhaps the most versatile Civ by design. Three of the BIGGEST problems in Civ 5 were "How do I fund my empire on a large map", "How do I set up a religion with tithe, pagoda's and religious centres" (subquestion: where do i get the faith to quickly buy the pagoda's in every city?) and "how do i maximize culture so i can have as many SPs unlocked as possible". Songhai's ability takes care of one, and their UB takes care of the other two. 115 gold from encampments (on epic speed) is no joke. Half-priced temples that inherently provide +2 culture is no joke (potentially boosted to +4 +2 with religion). Definitely should be on that list over BORE-ASS "GET A FREE POLICY TREE FOR DOING THINGS YOU'D DO ANYWAY" POLAND.

 

[acluewithout]

As I’ve said before, Civ V v Civ VI: how is his still a thing?

Oh wow, yes. I had completely forgotten that we used to have elaborate and detailed environments, and everybody wasn't just trapped in some strange black void with a small piece of wallpaper behind them.

It’s just an aesthetic choice, but I much prefer Civ VI’s leader designs, including the background. You sort of lose the focus on the leader in Civ V because of the elaborate backgrounds. Civ VI for the win on leaders, IMO.

... Civilization VI is going into a feast of yields with all the natural disasters and so on.

Civ VI’s tile yields are out of control. I mean, we maybe have only ourselves to blame. We asked for better Production, we asked for better Coastals, we asked for better UI. And FXS dutifully delivered. But yeah, now yields are out of control.

Civ 5's endgame is incredible.

I think this is one of the biggest differences between Civ V and Civ VI, and is where Civ VI is sorely lacking.

Civ V didn’t just have more end game content. It had more meaningful end game content. The end game was a distinct phase of the game, with its own mechanics, and those mechanics drove conflict. It’s not just the ideological mechanics, although that was clearly a big part of it. It was also the units and other things.

Civ VI really, really doesn’t have any equivalent mechanics. The key thing to realise is that Civ VI’s Governments and Policy system isn’t a replacement for Civ V’s Social Policies / Ideological system. Civ VI Governments / Policy system is a proper governance system, where you choose what your current government is and you empire wide policies. This is very similar to how governments worked pre Civ V versions of Civ, ie you unlock new governments through your tech tree and can then “swap” into them more or less at will. Civ V basically doesn’t have any real governance system, which is a real weakness for Civ V.

Civ V’s Social Policies and Ideology are more like a levelling system for your empire. They provide permanent bonuses, that forever shape your Civilization’s abilities and culture. Civ VI has decided to implement that same Mechanic via Governors, which again introduce promotion trees and permanent abilities. The difference is the abilities only apply to one city.

Interestingly, FXS have now taken Governors further down the Social Policy route via Secret Societies, which have brought back some empire wide bonuses.

Overall, I prefer Civ VI is this area. I’m glad we have the return of proper governments and policies. And Civ VI’s implementation of Social Policy type mechanics via Governors is much better.

But Civ VI falls down with not going further and implementing the equivalent of late game Social Policies ie Ideologies, and all the mechanics and other end game content that went with that.

The lack of a solid end game is one of my biggest frustrations with Civ (along with the almost non-existent empire management angle). I’m liking NFP, but I really think it was maybe a tad premature for FXS to go down the game mode / dlc path until they had nailed the end game. My two hopes are that NFP will introduce more challenging economic / empire management (which I actually think would work better as optional modes, given the potential to make the game discouragingly harder for new players), and then once NFP is over we maybe get a small expansion that really focuses on the end game / ideologies etc perhaps with a few game modes focused on that end game too.

But, really, who knows?

 

[Morningcalm]

Dynamic music: Civ 5 > Civ 6
Ambient music: Toss-up, I think Civ 5 overall had more (albeit licensed) music, whereas Civ 6 has good early ambient music followed by repeats of other civs' themes ad nauseum in the modern era
Gravitas: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (Strongly agree with @Krajzen here)
Menus: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (Civ 6's menus do not have access to the Civilopedia, have a blue plastic ambience, and lack gravitas, let alone much change in music or graphics throughout expansions)
Leader Backgrounds: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (This is clearly one of the areas where Civ VI cut costs, as they no longer have to animate the magnificent backgrounds of Civ 5, instead opting to replace them with smudged dark paintings which would look better without all the smudging around them)
Historical Quotes: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (Civ 6 opts for bad "dad" joke quotes, quotes criticizing the very tech or civic they are about, and several are inaccurately attributed, whereas Civ 5 quotes overall have more dignity)
Terrain Graphics: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (While Civ 6's terrain graphics grew on me over time, I still prefer the realism of Civ 5's approach to the bright plastic approach of Civ 6)
Leader Interactions: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (Backgrounds aside, Civ VI opts for cutscenes instead of real-time interactions, which makes leader interactions inherently more annoying. Did I also mention that in Civ VI all the interactions are weirdly stuck on the left side of the screen?)
Loading Screens: Civ 5 > Civ 6 (Civ 6's loading screens don't even allow you to mouse over the unique unit or unique infrastructure to see what they do.)
Vanilla Game: Civ 6 > Civ 5 (To be fair, Civ 5 became way better with expansions, whereas Civ VI only marginally improved with expansions, partly due to feature bloat and an unwillingness to change the plastic aesthetic)

 

[fossar_]

Civ V > Civ VI:
Difficulty: 6 isn't difficult enough/the AI is terrible. Deity in 6 is like Emperor in 5. If you can pursuade your neighbours not to attack you in the first 100ish turns you win on Deity in 6 with very little trouble. I've only beaten Deity in 5 once and I've got many times more hours playing 5.
Wonders: Wonders in 6 are underpowered on the whole. I went through the list and less than half the wonders in 6 feel like theyre worth the production time let alone the tile you crush to build them, and many of those are situational. Yes there's less wonder-whoring but honestly I don't think it's a trade that's good for the game if wonders aren't wonderfully exciting.
Late game: 6 is severely lacking on late-game macro decisions and everyone knows it. With 5 you've got ideologies coming in and the rest of your policy choices really shape your game. 6 is build the relevant districts or units and plod along until you switch over to projects. Things get pretty mad expensive late-game in 6 which makes the problem worse.
Relative value of food and production: Production is king in 5 but food is also essential because growth = science. In 6 you could work 2 food tiles all game and be fine, any more than 7-10 excess food has limited return very quickly whereas you're often starved for production all game.
Specialists: Specialists in 6 are a shambles get it together Firaxis/2K. They're basically a penalty for building too many districts/wonders in a city and you run out of workable tiles, plus they've got no interaction with other game mechanics. Specialists are a major part of how you play 5.
Gravitas: I hadn't considered this but with others mentioning I do agree. I think this has a lot to do with decisions being more impactful, the cultural trees being a prime example of this. There is definitely a motion in game design, admittedly caused largely by gamers feedback themselves, that penalties should be avoided in favour of giving bonuses all the time. This attitude is present in 6 much more than 5 and suffers for it. In this type of game that's not about instant gratification but rather intelligent long-term strategy, feeling like your decisions matter is essential. Government choice + policy cards being easily interchangeable, amenities, and settle locations are some of the most significant offenders on this front.
Settle Locations: This important enough that it needs it's own section. The art of choosing great settle spots is one of the highlights of 5 for me. With fewer cities, getting the best possible sections of your land in your workable range and balancing inner rings Vs later acquisitions is a real challenge. While that's not completely gone in 6 since you now prioritise settles with great district spots etc, it's much less significant than 5. The tactic is just cram em all 4 tiles away and just put districts on the bad flatland tiles jobs a goodun.

Civ VI > Civ V:
Viability of War: On harder difficulties in 5 early war puts you back incredibly quickly because the AI builds so many units whatever the era or their diplomatic situation. On the offense, it takes much longer for a city to start being productive and meaningfully contributing to your empire in 5. Districts help massively in making war viable in 6 since you can build your campus/theater square etc and buy all the relevant buildings and it's near as good as any other city. 5 has a slew of essential buildings and lack of cash to purchase them in early and mid game compared to 6.
Corps and Armies: A smaller point but these make a lot of sense and provide culture players better defense against science which is always a struggle.
Specialising of cities with districts: Districts allow for vastly more customisation of individual cities than in 5, especially with govenors. However, playing efficiently to your win condition really just ends up building the same ones everywhere and not much else. IZ's are about the only one that is truly situational and dependent on the tiles surrounding land and are fun because of it.
A bunch of realism checks and smaller improvements: Although the roads and movement in 6 are annoying, they do make sense. Similarly, as much as perfectly executing libraries finishing in all your cities on the same turn as researching Philosophy for Nat College is probably the most satisfying thing you can do in 5, the whole national building mechanic is not the best. Friendships being meaningful, casus belli's, diplomatic visibility, keeping your original pantheon, walls and city ranged attacks, religion not being dependent on faith first meet, failed wonders giving production back etc, etc, etc. It's quite a long list ngl.

Both Bad:
Tall vs Wide balance: Wide is always better in 6 because there aren't enough benefits for high pop cities but at least it's possible to play tallish if you're doing science. That is mainly cos the AI can't handle districts or decide on sensible win conditions though. In 5, tall tradition is the only sensible option unless you're doing domination. Thankfully there's a great modding community which can fix a lot of this though. I have realised that 6's emphasis on wide is core part of what makes war more viable outside of domination strats which I've listed as a point in favour of 6 though.
Happiness/Amenities: Happiness in 5 is too stark and doesn't reward excess happiness nearly enough but 6 has the opposite problem to the same magnitude. IMO penalties for being negative should be much greater; spawn units earlier, loyalty damage etc.

Writing out this list has been a bit sad really. I've long preferred 5 mainly because I never gave 6 much of a chance some initial bad reviews and not being able to afford it. I've recently got into 6 and all the little improvements really add up and I do enjoy the district choice part of the strategy. Having written this though it obvious that there are so many vital areas in which 6 is lacking that made 5 so great so now they both feel more lacklustre than ever.

 

[Sostratus]

The great people of civ6 are probably better, at least conceptually; but I think the system for earning GPP was superior in civ5; and i do really miss the great tile improvements.
Something so satisfying about getting a bunch of manufactories roaring with 11 each or what have you...

The other thing is I feel that social policies allowed for a more nuanced game start strategy between tradition/liberty/honor/kind of piety.
Maybe that's more of a gripe with how relatively non unique the civ6 governments are, and I think there is some kind of ideal middle ground system between SPs and cards. I just haven't put my finger on it yet.

 

[hhhhhh]

The great people of civ6 are probably better, at least conceptually; but I think the system for earning GPP was superior in civ5; and i do really miss the great tile improvements.
Something so satisfying about getting a bunch of manufactories roaring with 11 each or what have you...

The other thing is I feel that social policies allowed for a more nuanced game start strategy between tradition/liberty/honor/kind of piety.
Maybe that's more of a gripe with how relatively non unique the civ6 governments are, and I think there is some kind of ideal middle ground system between SPs and cards. I just haven't put my finger on it yet.

If Great Writers have the ability of making an improvement of 4-13 culture they will be so good in Civ VI.

 

[acluewithout]

that's more of a gripe with how relatively non unique the civ6 governments are

Firaxis have really done very little with Governments beyond Vanilla.

Governments don’t impact loyalty. They have some late game impact on Tourism and Diplomacy, but it’s pretty blunt and not always apparent. The late game governments have unique policies tied to each government, but they don’t have eg unique governors, units, districts / buildings tied to any governments, diplomatic options. They don’t really interact with the World Congress, not even having eg Resolutions that impact particular governments.

Government Plaza and Diplo Quarter don’t really tie with governments except in terms of when GP Buildings unlock and Legacy Cards (and, IMO, legacy cards feel very random).

And then there’s all the just “unused” mechanics. Tourism doesn’t do anything except impact CV, eg no ideological pressure. Happiness and maintenance are largely invisible, and certainly don’t interact with governments (beyond policy cards) they way they did in Civ V. All the governments are aligned along the axis of either freedom, order or autocracy, but there’s no real significance to that. Anarchy is essentially invisible, as there’s no real penalty to swapping governments.

I’m not really saying the existing Civ VI mechanics are bad. I’m more saying there is just a lot left on the table around “politics, culture and conflict”, the late game, and economic management. And those gaps are particularly apparent when you look at Civ V.

Specially, Civ VI is missing some sort of significant empire management, where you’re forced to do things to manage your empire. And Civ VI is also really missing more consequential decisions about how your empire develops leading to some sort of end game mechanics, eg ideologies and ideological pressure.

The other thing Civ VI is missing v Civ V is access to the .dll. This is not to say that Civ isn’t mod friendly. But it doe constrain what can be done with mods, with the result that things like Vox P aren’t possible. I think mods like that are a big part of Civ V’s charm, which is a real issue for Civ VI as the game matures and people are really starting to look for that sort of content.

Anyway. Short point, Firaxis must be well aware of these various concerns by now. Yet, it’s almost entirely unclear if Firaxis will so anything about them

It looks like we might, and I mean might, more interesting empire management type stuff, given there will be some sort of “Alternate Economy” mode. I also think empire management is probably better being somewhat optional, given constraints on what you can do and or negative consequences does seem to be a real turn off for some people. When Firaxis want to introduce “economy” type mechanics, they have shown they can do a good job. Loyalty is just an awesome mechanic, and seems to keep getting better whenever FXS tweak it. Resources is a pretty good Mechanic, if you ignore infantry / tanks both needing oil and aluminium helicopters. And the basics of Civ VI’s happiness / amenities system is really solid - it’s just tuned in a way that it rarely impacts your game.

Firaxis could totally do more around ideology and ideological pressure - all the basic mechanical building blocks are there, and they have experience with those mechanics from Civ V. Secret Societies also shows just the tiniest taste of the sort of thing FXS could do with these sorts of ideas. But I don’t think this sort of stuff would work well as a “game mode”. Meaning either it doesn’t happen, or it’s done as a game mode and so is very limited / disappointing, or we have to wait for something like another expansion to tackle that area (and that seems unlikely).

I don’t think the .dll is a lost cause, but it’s not looking good. So, yeah.

Anyway. Enough. I really didn’t mean to be posting on these themes again. I’m just somewhat frustrated by the state of the game after two expansions etc. I played a few good games of Civ last weekend, and was left with the same feeling I’ve had for a few years: the first 150 turns are brilliant, but there is very little meaningful to look forward to after that, except a desert of could have been.

The first half of Civ VI is a brilliant strategic and tactical 4X. The back half is essentially roleplaying sandbox, and even that is quite limited. Overall, I really like the game, and think FXS have done a great job on this iteration of Civilization. And I recognise that game development cycles are now very long, and this maybe is particularly the case for a game like Civ VI which is incredibly ambitious in terms of historical and mechanical scope. But it still feels like a lot of brilliant stuff was left on the cutting room floor or hasn’t got nailed down, and I would not presume that this stuff will make it into the game no matter how long I wait, although I’m happy to be surprised.

 

[Janskey]

A lot has been said already, but one thing I miss is gifting units, either to AIs or city states. Now if I want to protect my suzerainty, I'll just have to surround the CS with either my own or levied units and sometimes the AI will stay at war till the end of the game. Maybe there should be some kind of trigger, like if they haven't achieved anything in 50 turns, just end that useless war.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

Oh one thing I remember was that in Civ 5 if you went into a Joint War you could say 'I'll be ready in 5/10 turns". In civ 6 the joint war is declared immediately.

 

[Krajzen]

The first half of Civ VI is a brilliant strategic and tactical 4X. The back half is essentially roleplaying sandbox, and even that is quite limited.

I'd like to now point at the fact that half of the game is in the modern era. No, seriously.
We get 4 eras set in the period 4000BC - 1750 AD (let's say the latter basing on English industrial revolution)
Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance
Then we get industrial era in the middle, let's say 1750 - 1914 AD...
And then 4 eras for 20th and 21st century: modern, atomic, informatorom and future.

Whose idea was this? I mean, I am goddamn ready to bet my hair that the vast majority of people here find early ages atmospherically more interesting as well. You know: pyramids, agriculture, epic poetry, religion, knights, exploring seas, gunpowder armies. Yes, of course 20th century is a necessary component of a civ game, but I am certain this is one of less interesting eras for many people, but it doesn't even matters: why do we spend one third of a Civilization game in 20th century, and HALF of it in the period (let's say) 1848 - 2050?

Now this does matter in two ways. Firstly, no historical era should be so disproportionately shoved into any such game. I am a great fan of a medieval era - imagine it covering half of civ6. And it took 1000 years, not 200. Compare it with Humankind which has six eras and "20th century until early 21st" is one of them. Ancient, classical, medieval, renaissance, industrial, modern. Feels about right.

Secondly, such way of balancing "lore" eras has an impact on the game itself. In every civ game great geographic discoveries should happen in renaissance. In Humankind that means that by the time world is discovered and the thrill of exploration is gone - there is one third of a tech tree left. In civ6 over half of a tech tree is left by the time you discover an entire world! The problem of boring endgame increases! Let's assume the game has awesome ideology system (like BNW), or industrialization is a game changer which changes dominant empires (as it should be). When you enter 20th century in this context, in HK-style game you have 1/6th of a game left: just enough for a final showdown to not feel bored. But in civ6 you have FOUR ERAS left! Similarly, you spend so much time with modern toys (military, techs etc) that you are bored.

So let me ask once again: whose idea was it to make half of tech tree be the endgame?

 

[fossar_]

-snip-

Although this has been a part of Civ for as long as I can remember, it is one of those design decisions that decides a lot of how the game plays.

To start with I think there are real, valid reasons for doing it the way it is. It's the idea of pacing technological development evenly vs pacing on a more historical timeline and there are pros and cons for both which I'll get into. I think it should be said that using Humankind as a reference is a bit ridiculous at this stage as no-one's played more than 50 turns of the game and gone outside the classical era to my knowledge. It's impossible to have a justified opinion on whether their way of pacing is better cos no-ones played a full game.

But anyway, a historical pacing has the benefits of extending the exciting exploration and other early parts of the game and making military decisions more important as unlocking some specific unit early could be a big advantage. By compressing the late game you also limit it dragging out and becoming uninteresting. With Civ6 they've not made nearly enough effort to make the end game more interesting but it taking a long time (with not many macro changes/decisions to make) is a significant downside.

On the flip side you have to consider that if you want to pace a game historically you have two options: stretch out the early game or crush the late game. Stretching the early game would probably result in tech times in the early game that would bore people waiting for them to finish. Compressing the late-game would suck even more life out as the limited number of upgrades available may well feel superficial and not representative of the actual depth of innovation in that era.

Also remember that just because there are 4 eras before industrial and 4 after doesn't mean Industrial era is the halfway point of the game. It's pretty common to 2-turn every tech in the information era but spend maybe average of 6ish on each ancient era tech. So we can see ancient era already is very roughly 3x longer than the information.

It's a balance, technological development is not linear, it's exponential. There is obviously middle ground somewhere but I think that probably varies by individual and there isn't one right answer. Personally, it would be nice to see early eras extended by 10-20% but nothing drastic.

 

[nzcamel]

Civ6 > Civ5
Everything except...

Civ5 > Civ6
Combat AI challenge Combat was harder in V....from memory (it has been a while, and I never played 5 that much).
Game Pace: Civ 6 is waaaay too fast. I play on Marathon 90% of the time (I just love a good long game ) and most my games are over in half the turns ish. I like the inspirations and eureka's; but they may need to go (in 7) to slow the game down
Trade & Navy: While it's nice having the dual trade unit (and pos easier for the AI); without specific naval trade, navies are irrelevant on all but island type maps; where they should be needed for a win on all but Pangaea maps. See this: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/making-navies-matter-in-civ-7.660105/

CIV5 > CIV6: TRAVEL TIMES
Never understood the need to nerf roads and make rough terrain even rougher. As if the combat and army system in these games couldn't be any more tedious.

This is about the only thing I definitely think Civ 5 did better than Civ 6. On a lot of maps it feels like pretty much every land unit goes at 1 tile per turn in practice, which makes the "fast" units feel a bit pointless.

A bunch of realism checks and smaller improvements: Although the roads and movement in 6 are annoying, they do make sense.

I'm with fossar on the roads. How and where you place units for battle has more meaning in VI thanks to the terrain and reduced movement; and the size of the world is increased simply by slowing most units down. Specifically I think this is more a bug bear for newer players of Civ, as if you go back to 4, other than cavalry, the only land units that had more than one space base movement were scouts. Those of us who have been playing for a long time don't really consider movement in 6 to be slow - we consider movement in 5 to be fast!

^ Yes. I do love a lot of the music in Civ VI, but I really, really miss the way every Civ had a war theme and a peace theme. The era progression was a nice idea but it doesn't work nearly as well with all themes as it does with a few (I've said it before and I'll say it again, I believe the idea was developed primarily with the American theme in mind, which is why that is the one that makes the best use of the era progression), and to me it's an inferior replacement for the dramatic transition from the peace theme to the war theme you had in Civ V.

Lots of the themes work well changing a little here and there over the era's. Keeps the sounds fresher given I play on marathon

Maybe the happiness system? It didn't really work as intended in Civ 5 and failed to stop ICS strategies, so I can't exactly say Civ 5 did this well, but it did at least seem to have some impact on the game. The amenities in Civ 6 I barely pay any attention to - it doesn't seem to matter that much if a city is short on them or not.

I agree that not having enough amenities should be more punishing than it is in 6; but there is no way that happiness was done better in 5. It was far to counter intuitive.

Civ V > Civ VI:
Settle Locations: This important enough that it needs it's own section. The art of choosing great settle spots is one of the highlights of 5 for me. With fewer cities, getting the best possible sections of your land in your workable range and balancing inner rings Vs later acquisitions is a real challenge. While that's not completely gone in 6 since you now prioritise settles with great district spots etc, it's much less significant than 5. The tactic is just cram em all 4 tiles away and just put districts on the bad flatland tiles jobs a goodun.

I agree with most of your post fossar; but not this bit. All your yields in 5 were similar; and you could put the same improvements on almost everything; which just flattened it all out further. City yields in 6 vary far more (even before GS); along with how much rivers can be a good boundary and give more housing; and that makes placement much more meaningful.

Firaxis have really done very little with Governments beyond Vanilla.

I really miss the legacy bonuses that vanilla had. How long I stayed in government X was important, because I wanted to move on to something with more card slots; but I also wanted just a few more % in ability X. I loved that trade off and I hope they look to bring it back in VII.

Oh one thing I remember was that in Civ 5 if you went into a Joint War you could say 'I'll be ready in 5/10 turns". In civ 6 the joint war is declared immediately.

I love this too; but I suspect it was removed because it's another tool that the human player can use far better than the AI. Maybe it should be available in multiplayer only...

I'd like to now point at the fact that half of the game is in the modern era. No, seriously.
We get 4 eras set in the period 4000BC - 1750 AD (let's say the latter basing on English industrial revolution)
Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance
Then we get industrial era in the middle, let's say 1750 - 1914 AD...
And then 4 eras for 20th and 21st century: modern, atomic, informatorom and future.

Whose idea was this? I mean, I am goddamn ready to bet my hair that the vast majority of people here find early ages atmospherically more interesting as well. You know: pyramids, agriculture, epic poetry, religion, knights, exploring seas, gunpowder armies. Yes, of course 20th century is a necessary component of a civ game, but I am certain this is one of less interesting eras for many people, but it doesn't even matters: why do we spend one third of a Civilization game in 20th century, and HALF of it in the period (let's say) 1848 - 2050?

I tend to enjoy the older era's more too; but in part because the game is less stale then. There is more to explore and look forward to. But this to a degree is how Civ has always been. It is by discoveries that Civilization is paced; not by time. Ergo why in all iterations of the game the Ancient era is X number of 10's of thousands of years; and the Modern Era is a centuryish at most. Certainly if you think back to Civ 3 with it's 4 era's; even though that does divide the game up more to your liking; the balance of time that passes is still far more in the older era's. Of course the more techs you add, the more likely you will end up with what we have in 6 given the exponential science curve we see in our world at the moment.

Having said all that, I was surprised when a new Era was added after the Information era. There was some speculation at the time that we might get an era in between the Renaissance and the Industrial; and I would have welcomed that, instead of the future era we got.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I love Cultural Victory-playstyles, but apart from the relics of Civ 6 (and Natural Parks/Rock Bands), Civ 5 on the whole was just a lot better.
Why on earth did they for example take away the wide variety of theming possibilities?
The only things you can theme now are the museums, which rules out theming Great Works of Writing and Music, as well as theming wonders (some as early as Classic Era, like Great Library which could theme Great Works of Writing).
And the museums that you can theme (which only applies to art types and artifacts), all of them follow the same logic of "different civs, same era".
BORING!

Also, I don't see why Great Works of Music are even in Civ 6, since they are so garbage by themselves.
You hardly get access to them before the Industrial Era (unless playing as Russia), and even if you do, you have practically nowhere to store them until Broadcast Centers (apart from the odd garbage-tier wonders).
To top it off, the tourism bonus that GWoMs provide is laughable.

Firaxis, please expand theming and Great Works of Music to be more like Civ 5.
I really miss spending a lot of time to shuffle my great works around and trading for missing pieces in my collection.